Richard Condon Biography and List of Works

American novelist, playwright, and crime writer, best known for his thrillers THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1959) and PRIZZI'S HONOUR (1982). Several of Condon's books have been made into films.

"I thought that Condon's The Manchurian Candidate was one of the best books I had ever read. I just couldn't put it down and after I had read it, I thought, 'I've just got to make a film of it.' It had great social and political significance for me at the time, and it has certainly been - unfortunately - a horribly prophetic film. It's frightening what has happened in our country since that film was made."
(Frankenheimer in The Cinema of John Frankenheimer by Gerald Pratley, 1969)

Richard Condon was born in New York City. He was educated in public schools and served in the United States Merchant Navy. He worked briefly in advertising and then from 1936 as a publicist in the American film industry for 21 years, among others for Walt Disney Productions, Hal Horne Organization, Twentieth-Century Fox, Richard Condon Inc., and other firms. As a novelist Condon made his debut at the age of forty-two, with THE OLDEST CONFESSION (1958). Condon, his wife, and two daughters have lived in France, Spain, Ireland and Switzerland.

"Politics is a from of high entertainment and low comedy. It has everything: it's melodramatic, it's sinister and it has wonderful villains."

Condon's most famous thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, depicts a soldier, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), who comes back with his platoon from the Korean War with a Congressional Medal of Honour. However, he has been brainwashed with the rest of his unit by a Chinese psychological expert during his captivity in North Korea, and primed to kill at the release of a certain code. The action, which gained Shaw his medal, exists only in the minds of the Sergeant and his platoon. Shaw's primary target is a U.S. presidential nominee. Shaw, under orders, murders his columnist employer. His own mother (Angela Lansbury) turns out to be the Russian operator, who plans to elevate her husband to the White House. In the case of Major Marco (Frank Sinatra) the brainwashing has been only partially successful, and Marco pieces together the plot. Marco unlocks Shaw's mind, who kills his mother, stepfather and then himself. - The film was forbidden in Finland.

"MARCO: Poor Raymond... poor friendless... friendless Raymond. He was wearing his Medal when he died. I tried to tell you what that means... to be a Medal of Honour winner... to a soldier, anyway..."
(from George Axelrod's screenplay)

In the next ten years Condon published prolifically. His novel, A TALENT FOR LOVING (1964), a love story set in the world of bold and beautiful, was made into a film in 1969, starring Richard Widmark and Cesar Romero. AN INFINITY OF MIRRORS (1964) is a story about Paule, a daughter of a great Jewish actor, and Veelee, a descendant of a German military family, who fall in love in Paris. They marry, but on the eve of World War II their paths separate. When the persecution of the Jews starts, Paule leaves her husband, part of the monstrous machine. Veelee continues his career in the army and Paule finds a new lover. The death of their son, Paul-Alain, finally awakes Paule and Veele to see themselves as puppets of evil. "What I wanted to say," explained the author, "was that when evil confronts us in any form, it is not enough to flee it or to pretend that it is happening to somebody else..."

"Paule concentrated on her house, on becoming a good German wife, and on learning to think and feel like a German... She had already read Nietzsche and it had made her giggle, but she reread him with the memory of the storm troopers at earnest work all around the army staff car. She felt at home with Stefan George and von Hofmannstahl, though George's work had been used recently to make the Nazis more palatable in German intellectual circles. She would not read Kafka, the Czech whom the Germans adored; she could not afford hopelessness."
(from An Infinity of Mirrors, 1964)

Condon gained critical success again in 1974 with the WINTER KILLS, which paralled the lives of the members of the Kennedy family with a theme that murdering presidents is a good idea for world leaders who wish to better themselves. The story was also filmed, but despite its cast included Anthony Perkins, Elisabeth Taylor and John Huston, it was never satisfactorily released. One of its producers was murdered and the other sent down for forty years on a drugs charge.

In 1982 appeared Prizzi's Honour, the first part of Condo's 'Prizzi' trilogy. The tale of the Mafia killers, and their romance was filmed in 1985, starring Kathleen Turner and Jack Nicholson. In the story Charley Partanna, a slow-witted hit man from a close-knit Mafia family, falls in love with a woman, whose husband he kills. The woman turns out to be an assassin for hire but she swears that she didn't take part in her husband's plots against the Prizzi's. Finally the both assassins are hired to kill each other. PRIZZI'S MONEY (1994), the second part in the trilogy, told a story of a woman, Julia Asbury, whose husband has Mob connections. After a few double-crosses, she is chase by the Prizzis who want their money back.

For further information: Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers (1985), ed. John M. Reilly; The Reader's Companion to the Twentieth-Century Writers (1995), ed. by Peter Parker.

MEN OF DISTINCTION, (1953)